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Here ya go: EU worries about access to key raw materials
Published: Thursday 4 June 2009

European Union ministers supported plans last week to ensure industries get better access to raw materials, as competition for access to commodities such as rare metals becomes fiercer with globalisation.
Background:

In November 2008, EU Enterprise Commissioner Günter Verheugen presented a new 'integrated strategy' for raw materials (EurActiv 5/11/08).

The initiative came amid growing concerns about global resource scarcity as the environmental 'footprint' of the planet's population grows (EurActiv 29/10/08).

The European Commission's proposed strategy suggested three pillars in its policy responses to those challenges, which it sees as a threat to the competitiveness of European industry:

* Better and undistorted access to raw materials on world markets;
* Improve conditions for raw materials extraction within Europe, and;
* Reducing the EU's consumption of raw materials by increasing resource efficiency and recycling.



A new strategy, to be fleshed out later this year, should aim to lower the consumption of primary natural resources by increasing resource efficiency and recycling, EU industry ministers agreed after a meeting last week (28 May).

"The European economy is dependent on a number of energy and non-energy raw materials," read the ministers' conclusionsPdf external , adding that achieving a "resource-efficient economy should be a guiding principle for European industrial policy".

Their words came as an endorsement of a European Commission raw materials initiative, published in November last year (EurActiv 5/11/08).

EU industries, and particularly those active in telecoms, aerospace and other hi-tech sectors, are facing fierce competition for natural resources from emerging economies, the Commission pointed out.

China and India are increasingly using raw materials from Africa and Latin America, which are home to some of Earth's largest reserves of minerals and metals.

'Raw materials diplomacy'

"A strong and unforeseen surge in demand, essentially driven by strong growth in emerging economies, led to a tripling of metal prices between 2002 and 2008," the Commission underlined in its initiative. "In particular, China accounted for more than 50% of the growth in world consumption of industrial metals between 2002 and 2005."

"Reducing energy consumption and the use of raw materials, removing trade barriers to improve the supply of raw materials, improving energy- and resources-efficiency and achieving a greater use of renewable energy sources and secondary raw materials should be the guiding principles for European industry," the ministers said in their conclusions.

The ministers called for "raw materials diplomacy," inviting the Commission to "reinforce the dialogue with all relevant third countries and raise the issue in all appropriate trade and other fora".

Critical list of raw materials

They also invited the Commission to finalise a preliminary list of critical raw materials in view of a final agreement "before the end of 2009".

High-tech materials are increasingly at the basis of innovative "green techs", associated with renewable energy and reduction of greenhouse gases, the Commission pointed out in its November assessment.

Raw materials considered as "potentially critical" for 'high tech' sectors and the economies of developed countries, include niobium, platinum and titanium, the Commission said in its preliminary assessment (see Annex of Commission raw materials initiativePdf external ).

Platinum and palladium, for instance, are used in the fuel cells that power hydrogen cars, while sillicon, gallium and silver are used in solar cells. Cu-Indium-Gallium-Selenium (CIGS) alloys are used in "thin-film" photovoltaic technology for solar cells. Indium is used to manufacture microprocessors and the next generation of ultra-small RFID chips, which can be embedded in all sorts of consumer products.

A 2008 report by the US National Research Council listed five non-energy raw materials considered as being "highly critical": indium, manganese, niobium, rare earths and the platinum group metals.

A French study identified short to medium-term risks to their supply of a number of materials: antimony, chromite, cobalt, germanium, gallium, indium, lithium, magnesium, molybdenum, platinum, palladium, rhodium, rare earths, rhenium, titanium and tungsten.

The Commission said the list could be expanded to take in five more materials (chromite, manganese, niobium, tantalum and vanadium) targeted by the US report and Japanese stockpiling policy, "and for which there is a high degree of concentration of producing countries".

EU ministers said it considers the Commission's list of critical raw materials as "a preliminary selection" and invited the Council and the Commission "to come back to this with a view to agreeing this list before the end of 2009".

Link: http://www.euractiv.com/en/sustainability/eu-worries-access-key-raw-materials/article-182860